


jackhammer

by twnkwlf



Series: you were beaming once before [1]
Category: Shameless (TV), Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Post-Finale, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of all her kids, he gives her the least trouble because he takes care of shit without her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	jackhammer

For the first week, everything is fine because Carl tells her that Ian went to another ROTC retreat. She doesn’t see anything wrong with how his bed has been stripped bare and his clothes are all gone.

A few days later, she doesn’t know why he isn’t home, but the curiosity is only in passing because Liam is bawling his head off in his high-chair, and she can’t think, and Carl accidentally slices his thumb open at the breakfast table on a way-too-big knife.

When she rips it out of his hands, he says the knife is Ian’s. He gave it to Carl before he left.

After bandaging him, Fiona curses Ian in her head for enabling Carl. She plans to ring him out about it when he gets back. She wipes it clean, carefully, with a paper towel. and then she recognizes it. It’s the knife they got at that sketchy sport store in Holbrook for Ian’s 16th birthday. It cost all her tips and a crinkled stack of one dollar bills that she was saving. Ian loved that knife, he talked about it for weeks before his birthday, like a little kid, and he showed her the catalogues, trying to sell it as if he _needed_ it for ROTC. She gave in like she used to when he was little, when he bugged her for candy or sips of her beer. The freckles and dimples always got to her.

She doesn’t know why he would let Carl have it. Carl, who would probably treat it like a swiss army knife until it went blunt and useless.

For the second week, she’s manic and can’t sleep.

They spend all of Monday and Tuesday looking around, calling around, banging on doors. He’s not at the Kash-and-Grab. He hasn’t been to school. He’s not back from ROTC, and Lip tells her there never was an ROTC retreat in the first place, so really he’s been gone for two weeks. Fiona wants to cry, but she holds it in long enough to talk to Linda on the phone. At 10 PM, her breath starts to feel quick. She can’t get her heart to calm down. How did this fly under her radar?

Lip runs his hands through his hair for the fourteenth time, with half a bottle of flat beer growing warm in front of him. He leans over the counter to tell the kids to get in bed. Debbie keeps asking questions, even though Fiona keeps answering vaguely because she has no answers, and because she doesn’t want to start a panic (though it’s already there- under her skin). Debbie’s face seems dark and deep, her jaw tight. She’s been at Sheila’s most of the day. It makes Fiona nervous to watch Debbie like this because she seems shut off. When Frank was gone, she couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t stop brainstorming, searching, crying. Maybe she’s desensitized to this kind of thing now.

Carl takes Liam up to their room and Debbie stops at the bottom of the stairs, chewing on her lip in the nervous way.  
  
“It’s fine, Debs. Go on,” Fiona says. She tries to smile, but it makes her eyes water.

“He was going through some shit,” Lip says when it’s just them.

She stares at the dirty dishes.  
  
“Did he tell you what was going on?”

“Yeah,” he says. He sighs deeply, reaching for his cigarettes. He rubs his eyebrow like he always does when he’s thinking. “Mickey Milkoivch.”

She pauses. The first thing that comes to mind is meth. She remembers all the flippant things that Mandy has said about covering crank deals for her brother in the summertime. An image flashes through her, of Ian with sores on his face, and rotten teeth, and a pipe in his hands. She shudders.

“Oh, don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me he’s mixed up in that.”

But Lip doesn’t tell her that.

“They were fucking,” he says. “ I, uh, I think it kind of did a number on him.”

“Milkovich? _Mickey_ Milkovitch?” She blinks a few times. “He just got married.”

“Yeah, I think that was the problem.” He picks up his beer, sets it back down. Does it again. "I just- I don't know. I guess a bunch of shit went down." 

"Like what?" She practically shrieks it. 

"He doesn't tell me this shit anymore, Fi, I don't...fucking know." Lip bites on his thumb, his leg tapping. He looks distracted. 

“He didn’t come out of his room for a week,” Fiona says. 

“He’s out now.” Lip sighs deeply, shuddering at the end. “He said he was over it.”  
  
Ian used to wear his heart on his sleeve when he was a boy, always rubbing at his eyes when he was upset, always crying on Fiona’s lap when Monica slapped him across the face or when Frank took his piggy bank savings. Somewhere along the line, he stopped all that. He’s out the back door before she can stop him most days. There are some nights when he doesn’t come home- she expects that from Ian. Out of all her kids, he gives her the least trouble because he takes care of shit without her. He’s really been gone for two weeks and she feels like her chest is inside out, and everything is cold.

She can feel his absence now, like a blister on her heel. There’s no escaping the little sting when she walks through the house, when she can’t hear the sound of his fucking combat boots hitting the linoleum in the kitchen.

Something eats away at her stomach, makes her heart race uncomfortably, and her insides twist like they’re being coiled. It’s her fault.

If Ian was here, she would hug him like she always does, elongated hugs where she rubs his back and he squeezes her ribs. Lip isn’t much for being held, but sometimes Fiona needs to feel strong arms around her. That’s what Ian is for.

She would cry for him, tell him that she’s sorry that she didn’t know, that she wasn't really there.

She would tell him that Jimmy left, too. Her heart is broken, too.

“We gotta call Tony," she says. She’s sure that Ian is in danger, it’s like she can feel it. It’s making her sick to her stomach. “He could be...fucking _anywhere_ , what if he’s hurt? Where’s my phone?” She spins in circles. She just had her phone and now it’s not where she left it. Her heart races and she looks under the paper towels and on the window sill. She throws the shit around, looking under the plates and napkins from the hardly-touched dinner.  
  
“He left on his own, Fi.” Lip’s voice draws her back like a slap to the face. She turns to look at him, running his cigarette hand through his hair again. “He took all his clothes...his stuff.”

She told Debbie about the time Frank was gone for a year. She was 9, the boys were just toddlers, always hungry. She remembers how Monica only bought real groceries when she was on some kind of pill that kept her upright, and how she was pregnant with Debbie, and fucking around with some guy from the gun club while Frank was away. Most weeks in that year, Fiona walked to the food bank at St. Tim’s and got brown bags filled with canned beans, and canned spinach, and macaroni if she was lucky. Lip would cry his eyes out, throw the food around, make a mess because it was pretty gross shit, no matter how long Fiona microwaved it. But Ian always ate his food without a fuss, despite how shitty canned spinach was.

Her face crumples, and the cry comes out, scraping he esophagus, hushed and fast. The tears blur her vision so she closes her eyes. She is a withered version of herself, she doesn't want Lip to see it.

Is it real that he’s gone? Like how Frank always goes, like how Monica goes, how Jimmy goes. She gasps. She cries and cries.

She hasn’t cried about Jimmy yet, not really.  
  
Now she can’t make it stop. Lip takes her by the shoulder, mumbling about how he'll figure it out, he'll get him back, he'll figure it out, he'll figure it out. She isn't listening to him, though, because there's waves crashing in her ears.

And her heart pounds like it’s being broken apart. She can hear it in her ears, and it sounds like it’s seconds from being just dust.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a series about Ian joining the army.


End file.
